Lost Boys
by teddybowties
Summary: In the darkness of space, a hand reaches for a hold against the emptiness... but what will holding bring? The melody of last despair or the sanctity of lasting promise?
1. Chapter 1

Lost Boys: A Doctor who Fanfic

especially for doctorsdiva

I don't own em; If I did, I'd be busy.

_Summary: In the darkness of space, a hand reaches for a hold against the emptiness... but what will holding bring? The melody of last despair or the sanctity of lasting promise?_

chapter one

Jack Harkness could feel the blood running down his leg. It wouldn't be far now, the room where they were keeping _him_, the heart of the Xja ship. His wrist strap was feeding him latitudes more often as he came closer to the Drive Chamber, the telltale lines on the tiny readout screen the only signal that he was going in the right direction. He reached out a hand...

THUNK! Kirrrrrsh-whoomp

One well-placed chop and grab, and the first of many of the latest wave of bugs lay dead at his feet. He didn't have time to do it gently. What was it the Doctor had quoted the other day? Jack smiled as he remembered the phrase over a pile of Xja kirschwassern, cyberized scouts that could tear apart an army in moments, given enough room to move. In these narrow corridors, they were easy pickings for someone like him. Odd how there seemed to be no contingency for intership attacks in their floor plan. The high frequency scraping sound that filled the Xja ship, the sound of Xja speech, had disoriented him when he'd first heard it; he could only imagine how it must have sounded for the man he was looking for.

hwooooo!

All at once, the bing of gravity doors swooping back into recesses took his attention.

The large portals sliced backward before him and jumped into hidden catches within the walls. _Big doors,_ he thought, wondering idly at the architecture of the place, a writhing mass of wires and plating. Very clinical, and the rooms were growing cooler, a side effect of the increased amount of mercury running through the conduits. He was so close now. The mercury proved it.

Too empty. No Xja to guard an inner chamber? No. Surely not. And it was dark? The bugs had watched too many Old Earth holovids. A five year old could have outwitted these oversized flycatchers! But still, a trap within a trap was not uncommon where the Doctor was concerned. Jack pulled his Webley from its holster and the plasma stiletto he'd hidden in his... and clung to the doorframe, and waited. The Xja should have come running to the smell of the mandible bite on his leg. They were cannibals, after all. Didn't matter whose it was, so long as they had meat. He thought of the Doctor that day, when the man had been yammering on about Disney movies. He was going to ask him about what he'd said, the exact phrase, yeah. That would be the first thing out of his mouth when they saw each other. Laughing out loud, he entered the freezing room. The blue of wall mounted sodium lights buzzed on, mixing in a bit of sulfur with the smell of foreign flesh and burning ichor.

A single bug stood between him and his quarry. Jack raised his gun, his plasma knife gaining height with each unsteady breath prey and predator shared. Hesitation was an unnatural thing, for him. Would it be the same for the small Xja standing between him and the Doctor?

Centuries before, he wouldn't have allowed such a thought as was forming now to enter his mind.

That was before he had met the Doctor, before he'd been forever changed.

Now he found that one thought filling his brain.

_Had he been wrong?_

More thoughts followed, less sharp, more hesitant. The enemy could have gained several rooms on him by the time he took a second breath, yet still the thoughts kept coming.

_Was it a child? Had he emptied the ship of all the able adult Xja? _

The ring of the Xja Continuum was silent in his ears as he stared across the close corridor into the violet eyes of a man-sized white mantid.

It was shivering, wasn't it? Wasn't it? If he had killed children, he'd have more than his own guilt to worry about. He'd hand the Doctor his Webley, cleaned and loaded, if it came to that.

_You... mustn't blame... self Jack. You didn't... all trying... kill you. Don't... in here. Just don't. Trust... child. His name... Yahs._

The Doctor was in his head. Barely. In all the years they'd known each other, Jack had never known the Time Lord to break that trust without cause. The man never did _anything_ without cause. It was bad, then.

Jack stiffened, not caring if the young Xja saw him falter in that moment. But then the mantid did a strange thing. It waved a long white claw and stepped aside, still trembling, its slender mandibles clicking and whirring away in a chorus of Xjandian words he couldn't decipher. Which brought up another question.

Where was the TARDIS? Was she missing? Or was she nearby, and the Doctor simply too weak to complete the circuit?

Either way, he reasoned as he nodded to the Xja and lowered his weapons, preparing to follow it into the cylinder of rotating anterooms that formed the ship's propulsive core, there was one sure way to find out.


	2. Chapter 2

chapter two

Nestled in his crèche like a giant cog wheel, the Doctor looked at and down and through the workings of the alien ship that had become his world. Buff as his birth day and splayed in place above a massive telepathic relay console in a far less flattering version of Da Vinci's Vetruvian Man, he found himself thinking of fudge brownie recipes as the sodium lights flicked on in that same unnerving blue that reminded a body of an interrogation room from a bad B movie.

The smell of sulphur... ah. It was reminiscent of farm air and rocky ledges and fishing... never had done much fishing with Susan, though he must have promised her. But then, he'd promised her a lot of things. One blink, another, and a tear came rolling sideways across his face, down over his chin as the Wheel turned, the immense Drive Matrix rotating to allow one of the entry doors to open.

He closed his eyes; reached. Softly touching, again he entered the thicker than average protective bubble around Jack Harkness's mind. His whispered touch made the man start, but the Captain was a quick learner who'd had training in this sort of thing.

_Up here, Jack. That's it, a little closer and you've got it! Brilliant!_

They stared at each other's faces for a while; it was only natural, Jack having walked in behind Yahs, expecting his friend's handsome face only to see the man's gangly form in a shiny silver cocoon of quasi-corporeal orificial plugs and findings high above him, connected to something resembling a cyberpunkesque Catherine Wheel.

Having seen all this, it was thankfully something less of a shock when the Doctor descended from his metallic chrysalis on an undulating wave of psionic pipings, ten tiny cords of silver energy that hooked him to the machine. At least there was a bit of Xja bubbling covering his naughty bits, otherwise Jack would have had a coronary, to say nothing of himself. That would have been a given.

"So, Doctor," started Jack, once he had taken in everything he'd cared to for the moment, "How's it hanging?"

The Doctor's shriek echoed across the Thousand Corridors, the namesake moniker that defined the cylindrical behemoth of the Xja engine core. He _was_ the engine, their only power source. The only thing in the universe keeping the ship from floating off, now.

As his nose and mouth were currently intubated by an artron-conversion feeding plug, he spoke telepathically once more, easing into Jack's mind so carefully. Then again, the experience was always a little like making love to someone special. He knew Jack loved him, horribly, terribly, unflinchingly; had known it and done nothing to soothe the man for far longer than was proper. And here he was, dangling like an erotic butterfly in a psychedelic web.

Suddenly, a word slid along his defenses.

_Mmmm. Erotic butterfly, eh? Why Doctor, how very kinky of you. _

Their eyes stayed locked for a moment longer; the Lord of Time could feel Jack's mind skirting along his own, searching as well as a human could for signs of strain that would never be visible outside it.

_Jack, this is no time for your multi-faceted artistry of the carnal antic. I need you. _

The Doctor could almost feel Jack flinch at the word. Need. The man had a soldier's honed instinct, after all, and, if there was anything his massive Time Lord brain wanted very much to forget yet never could quite manage, it was the inevitable, incessant, inconveniently endearing desire of every single Companion he'd ever had to mother him like a brooding hen. He watched with his mind as the iceberg tip of deep caring Jack never bothered to truly mask slid across the man's face at that single word.

Then a soft smile snuck up on him as he studied his friend. The man had understood him perfectly, of course, and was now busying himself with his wrist strap.

"Well, Doctor, you know I love a challenge. Shall I put on the red silk before or after we take dinner? I'm feeling limber... " Jack's eyes locked on the feeding tube, a frown shifting into place across his school-boyish baby blues. But it never reached his lips. He just... sat down on the grates below and lay back, looking up at his own personal blue yonder.

_How much time, Doc? How much time did it take for the Time Lord before you to die?_

In his mind, the Doctor smiled down at Jack Harkness, once more in awe of the human's ability to look straight through him when it counted. But there were no more moments to spare. He eased toward the floor grates slowly, watching Jack watch him, and soon his last act as the Puppeteer of the engine core was to let go of it all, to drift and hope and place his faith in the one man who could save the Xja from a swift death among the stars.


	3. Chapter 3

chapter three

Yahs watched the man watch the Time Lord. The Lord had self-ejected from the Puppeteer's Scaffold as if birthed. As he exited the monstrous metal womb, his thin, wet frame tumbled down in a lacy gob of mercury like some macabre marionette, and the energetic connects evacuated the flesh of his back in red upward-climbing streaks. Strands of the silver fluid snaked backward into their recesses, and then the ship began to shake with a monstrous rattle as tiny bolts and cogs and gravity-less globules of mercury jiggled free of their holdings and flew across the room.

The man called Jack was clutching the Time Lord as though he were a newly-hatched nymph; Then Jack turned, looked blankly in Yahs's direction, and climbed into the crèche the Time Lord had vacated. The Time Lord remained still on the grates, just as the man had lain him for a moment, until finally, as the man called Jack disappeared inside the Puppeteer's Scaffold, a trembling word broke the surfeit of calm that had washed the room in silence.

"Ow."

Yahs came to the Lord and knelt, forcing his powerful back legs behind him as he lowered himself, then, forward claws trembling, he reached down and slipped them carefully beneath.

"Yahs… yiliyk na'tui; huasuh na'hiit. " the Lord spoke Xjantu gently, despite the catch in his throat. Obviously, he was quite dangerously dehydrated from his time within the crèche. The intubation must have injured something, or it could have plugged up, or snagged somewhere deep in the mechanism. Regardless of the Lord's soft reassurances, there would be unpleasant infections to check for, expected and unexpected injuries to note, let amounts to be gauged and leaks to be patched.

Yahs shivered as he clasped his one remaining abdominal limb around the Lord's waist and heaved, pulling his charge into a sitting position long enough to survey the damage done by all those little invasions.

His Lord was thin, perhaps too thin, but then the Scaffold was meant for someone younger… of the same race, but not so. The rigging of the Scaffold had been created in desperation, a passing Time Lord's brilliant attempt to stabilize the corroded drive when the last Xja telepath had fallen victim to the Sleeping Rot. But that Time Lord had died in the crèche. And, at the last, in nature's own desperation, the Remaining had eaten her.

But not before many of them starved to death in refusal to do so.

The starfaring vessels of the Xja traversed the cosmos by refining the mental radiation of the Xja themselves, which during a certain span of time within the stellar year -when their collective minds rose up from their flesh and became a river of song- was rich in Artron energy. But the Time Lords… they lived with it inside them… the blood of the Xja fleet saturated the nerve fibres of their brains. Indeed, the saturation penetrated everything about a Time Lord.

And cannibalism was expected, even encouraged in Xja society. But there were stiff rules about piracy and consumption without consent, especially when the victim or criminal were Off-Shippers like the Lord and his Boekind companion, Harkness.

Strange that the Sleepers in the Holds had never thought to guard against pirates cropping up amongst their own kind. And stranger still that the Sleepers had not been touched.

Then the strangest thing of all had transpired, Yahs thought to himself about what the Lord had asked him earlier, just as the pirates were being… disposed of. The Lord had asked him to wake the Sleepers, which, once the Lord had forced ejection from the Scaffold, would eventually have taken the entire ship offline, not just the auxiliaries… and unless the Lord's friend could somehow perform miracles, those Sleepers and their dreams were the only thing powering the rest of the ship. Yahs had long since lost contact with the other three flyers. The last transmissions had been joint, a shared signal originating from the Observatory Flyer Murshelk and the Stores Ship Alphidy, almost three pulsar-blinks in the past.

Still, though Yahs trusted the Lord implicitly, there was a small niggle of worry that refused evacuation from his sense of self.

Why had the Pirates appeared in the first place?

-------

Pronunciations:

Xja: shj-yaa

Yahs… yiliyk na'tui, huasuh na'hiit.:

YAAS… yih-LEEK NAA tuu-ii; HU-ah-SUU na-HEET

Yahs… please trust him, just as you trust me.

Chapter four


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter four

Yahlasindrintalaasidvora.

She had been a good woman, a temporal philosopher of modest standing. Not a Prydonian like himself, but a Blyledge. The first Blyledge out of House Dvora in centuries. He'd been secretly proud when he'd heard what her choice had been.

She'd called herself The Caretaker.

From the looks of things, Yahlas had taken extraordinarily good care of the Xja… until they'd eaten her because of the supposed food shortage.

Wait. Xja were cannibals. They didn't need food stores!

Groaning somewhat, the Doctor pressed his fingers into Yahs' white arm, the one holding him down, and tried to speak.

"Glg! Rrrr…"

"What is it, Theta Sigma?" said the Xja, laying one soft inner claw alongside the Time Lord's face, "… tell us what you need."

The Time Lord's eyes grew wide then, so wide Yahs thought he might be going into shock from the stasis-locked preservant mercury. But then he just sank back to the grates and closed his eyes.

"Yahs… where did you get your name?"

Yahs flicked his inner eyelids over his eyes and gazed down at his Gallifreyan charge.

"I was born on the Second Moon Day of Dzt, in the year of Ystylan. Why do you ask?"

The Doctor blinked and sat up once again, his deep, calm stare boring ahead of itself as though he were drilling for oil.

"I was just wondering… didn't Lady Yalahsindrintalaasidvora disappear on the Second Moon Day of Dzt?"

"Yes," Yahs said softly, allowing his outer mandibles to clap together in a decisive if belated quiet click, "… and then she was eaten by the Mindless Ones. Are you asking a question of me?"

The Doctor's eyes narrowed; surely he couldn't be that slow. Surely! With a sigh, he sat up and craned his neck toward the heavens, where Jack was busy testing the telepathic overlays that ran to and from the Main Console.

"I imagine I am, Yahs my boy. Although, I am uncertain which one as yet. How is Jack?"

Yahs turned, straightened his long, milk-translucent fat-thoraxed Walking Stick body and looked askance at the Time Lord.

"I do not believe you are as slow as you claim, Theta Sigma. You are much like her. And your companion is doing well. His continual generation of Artron is very useful in filling the stores. Soon it will be time to change the feeding tubes, however, we will need to change the feeding tubes soon, else they will become clogged as they did with you."

Then the Doctor said something strange, something that made Jack's Time Agent senses do triple lutzes in his head.

The Time Lord said, very simply, "I don't eat enough to facilitate their use. He doesn't need those, either. Just take them out. It will save approximately 500.6270213 units of potential energy."

Yahs' head twitched to the left and back again; he had not expected such callousness.

But the Doctor merely continued on.

"He will die, and then come back. The Artron will build during that period. He cannot stay dead; that much is clear. Therefore, until we reach your destination, he shall remain inside the Scaffold, powering the Ships, if there are any left besides this one. Do you have enough power to initiate an all frequency sweep for the other vessels, Yahs?"

It was then that Jack, as he watched the Doctor ignore him utterly, remembered a certain Latin phrase he had come to appreciate in his younger years.

_Umbra Ex Machina._

If he could have shivered, he would have.

----

The Doctor felt strange.

At least he would have, had he still been in his body.

He was, in a manner of speaking, observing the source of the scraping now, through the midship external cameras. Jack must have entered the crèche within the Puppeteer's Scaffold by now… he had to find a way to let him know that his body was otherwise engaged.

He had his suspicions as to who, and the source of the scraping had confirmed it. He would deal with getting his body back later.

Stuck between the outer wall of the Drive Chamber and one of the propulsive gears, there was a space suit… he'd found it while angling the camera to get a better view of the double shell of the bulkhead seams.

And there had been a body inside the suit. He had to let Jack know. It seemed a scene out of a book he'd read once, except that he'd seen it happen far too many times for it to ever be just a story. A colonist tortured at the hands of another colonist, usually a space mad, ambitious zealot, while they both watch from afar, doomed to eternity, as the survivors crash to the planet to start a new life.

It was –admittedly- rather freeing to be a mind without a body; well, the ship was his body for the moment, technically speaking, although since it wasn't alive, he had his doubts whether it would be inviting him back.

What concerned him most was the question of why, because he really thought he already knew the who. He was staring at her.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter five

Yalahsindrintalaasidvora reached up with one hand to brush back the spiky mop of hair that was not hers and sighed with borrowed lungs. She rather hated having to do this to her mentor, but there was no other choice. She couldn't let the murderer escape, even if it meant all their lives…

She hadn't even had time to tell him before the-

'I know you aren't the Doctor,' thought a voice in her head.

She stiffened; a bramblebush of gold with long, twisted thorns named Wrong and Pain and Death grew in the sight of her borrowed brain, shallow roots climbing carefully across years of dust to reach her where she dwelt among the bodies her Teacher had buried in his soul. Rassilon, she was even one of them. Sighing mentally, she watched the blossom grow toward her, spilling whole thoughts here, fragments there, carefully concealed in a nice big ribbon of falsely casual telepathy. But this mind was trained, agile. For a human anyway. And humans hadn't truly gained that talent till the 51st century…

'Hello, Captain Jack Harkness,' she thought, letting her words echo through the Doctor's skull, 'And now I know you know. Someone murdered me. My Teacher is trapped inside the Ship. Go find him if you want to know more.'

The flower paused in its unfolding; obviously this human's mind was a bit quicker than normal, whatever happened to make it so Wrong notwithstanding.

'I see. Harm the Doctor and I'll find a way to harm you, if he doesn't survive this. Where can I find your Teacher?'

She laughed aloud, which caused the human's head to turn just so toward her.

'He is observing my body, which is stuck in the wiring outside the Hull. It's near one of the landing lights. Don't make me lead you by the hand, little human.'

Yahlas was surprised by the sound that followed next. Perhaps it had been too long since she'd heard a voice like his, but when he laughed at her, this strange, Wrong little human, she felt… nice. There was really no other word to describe it.

She lifted her finger, reached. Her hand could almost touch Jack Harkness' cheek. She could feel the light in him, gleaming, growing. She could feel his time lines, squirreling around, converging like locusts at so many points in history and future. And present. He was like a… what had the Doctor called it? A Christmas Tree.

Suddenly, the man's mouth moved, biting, gnashing uncontrollably. His blue eyes flashed open, like the sodium lights in the corridors of the Ship. Words came, like drops of blood in the dirt, soaking up the silence as little red sponges.

"Don't touch me with those hands."

Then, she understood many things, in that one moment.

One, that Jack Harkness loved the Doctor more than she did.

Two; that she would have to die again.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Jack stared with cold eyes at the woman who now wore the Doctor's body like a suit. He'd always done ice queen exceptionally well. And, of course, the Doctor warranted only the best of Captain Harkness's many talents with tongue and tong… and thong.

"Well, now that we've established sufficient professional boundary, what do you need? The quicker you're satisfied, the quicker the Doctor gets back to his –real- job."

She smiled, curling the Doctor's lips like a pro in the ghost of an alien sunrise; Yahs was standing like a mute referee between the two of them, calmly turning first to one side, then the other, back and forth. It reminded Jack of an old Earth comedy skit… 'Who's on First?'

"… I need you to ask me the questions you need to ask me. Is that suitable, Jack?"

Jack Harkness remained unimpressed. "And don't call me Jack. It's Captain Harkness to you, until you prove you aren't out to kill my friend out there. I've only known of one Time Lord able to switch bodies like you claim, and his name was The Master."

Yahlas blinked. "Was? So he's… gone then? Really gone?"

That threw him; he honestly thought she would care. "Yeah, he ah, had a bit of a problem with the Doc back on Sol."

She curved the Doctor's lips again, this time in relief, summoning a grin that seemed devoid of all female guile. "I had hoped he could be saved. But at least now he won't hurt anyone else with his childish petulance. Thank Good for that."

It was Jack's turn to smirk, despite the surprise he felt. For now, that response was enough to share a few juicy bits. "He –was- saved, according to the Doctor. He stepped in front of Rassilon's rod to save him, just as the Doctor was sending the Lord President and his entourage back to their proper timeframe. He fried the old goat, too, but good. I…I lost a lover not long before. The Doctor doesn't know." He sighed and looked away, hoping she would think he was letting his guard down. "He would have wanted to come, to save all those children and as many lives as possible, but… he was pregnant at the time…wouldn't have been right to risk his life and unborn child like that, just for a little blue marble in the back waters of Sol System."

Yahlas considered this, or pretended to, before she spoke again with those beautiful lips that weren't hers. Irrationally, Jack found himself wanting to hit her.

"I see. Even still, don't you think the Doctor might have wanted to make that decision on his own?"

Jack breathed, his exhalation icy in the surprisingly crisp air. Of course the mercury which cooled the Xja ships and served as a liquid method of communicative transfer was refined -properly- avoid mental decay, but nevertheless the cold was beginning to affect his outer nervous systems. Soon he would die. Again.

His laugh made the woman who wore the Doctor stiffen and step back. "So which section is he in again?" he said, smiling as his eyes suffered the first in a long wave of petechial hemorrhages, causing blood to drip down his face and freeze like little red petals on his skin.

Yahlas' stolen eyes grew wide; without a sound she replaced the feeding tubes and stood back, waiting for the impossible, like any good little Time Lord. How had she ever thought she was worthy of this kind of devotion, this… this kind of love?


End file.
